| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
Materials Science & Technology 2020
|
| Symposium
|
Additive Manufacturing: Equipment, Instrumentation and Measurement
|
| Presentation Title |
A New Preheating Method for Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion, Opening a Wider Range of Processable Feedstocks |
| Author(s) |
Ulf R. Ackelid, Martin Wildheim, Philip Nilsson, Ulric Ljungblad |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Ulf R. Ackelid |
| Abstract Scope |
The evolution of Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion started in the 1990’s. It was discovered early that an e-beam directed towards a powder bed is prone to scatter powder particles into a powder cloud. This phenomenon is known as “smoke” and if it happens, it usually disrupts the build process.
Preheating of each powder layer with a fast-scanning e-beam was later developed to prevent smoke. The preheating semi-sinters the powder and increases its electrical conductivity prior to melting. This laid the basis of the commercial E-PBF process successfully used for titanium alloys today.
However, e-beam preheating is not a universal cure. Anyone who has experimented with new powders in E-PBF knows the effort of finding smoke-safe preheating parameters.
This paper introduces a new preheating method using infrared radiation. The method gives 100% smoke suppression and opens a wider range of powder compositions and morphologies for E-PBF. |